Comments on Immanuel Wallerstein's
"Empire and the Capitalists"
(http://fbc.binghamton.edu/113en.htm)
posted
to www.marxmail.org on
WALLERSTEIN: In short, [Stephen] Roach is arguing that the macho militarism swagger of the Bush regime, the dream of the U.S. hawks to remake the world in their image, is not merely undoable, but distinctly negative from the point of view of large U.S. investors, the audience for whom Roach writes, the customers of Morgan Stanley. Roach is of course absolutely right, and it is noteworthy that this is not being said by some left-wing academic, but by an insider of big capital.
COMMENT: Roach represents a distaff view within Wall Street
and the foreign policy establishment. You get the same sort of hand-wringing
from George Soros, who spoke at a
What Roach, Soros, Krugman, Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs all represent is the nagging doubt of the bourgeoisie about whether the current expansionist drive is sustainable. In other words, it is the expression of mainstream Democratic Party thinking. It tends to crop up on the eve of some imperialist adventure and subside after the unruly natives are subdued.
Contrary to Wallerstein's spin on
Roach's remarks, the "macho militarism swagger" is not something that
Bush initiated. It is simply the latest installment in a foreign policy around
which is there is a substantial consensus.
WALLERSTEIN: Seen in longer historical perspective, what we
are seeing here is the 500-year-old tension in the modern world-system between
those who wish to protect the interests of the capitalist strata by ensuring a
well-functioning world-economy, with a hegemonic but non-imperial power to
guarantee its political underpinnings, and those who wish to transform the
world-system into a world-empire. We had three major attempts in the history of
the modern world-system to do this: Charles V/Ferdinand II in the sixteenth
century, Napoleon in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and Hitler in the
middle of the twentieth century. All were magnificently successful - until they
fell flat on their faces, when faced by opposition organized by the powers that
ultimately became hegemonic - the
COMMENT: Odd. I had the distinct impression that the
WALLERSTEIN: Hegemony is not about macho militarism.
Hegemony is about economic efficiency, making possible the creation of a world
order on terms that will guarantee a smoothly-running world-system in which the
hegemonic power becomes the locus of a disproportionate share of capital
accumulation. The
COMMENT: There is a fundamental confusion here. No advice
from Roach, nor Soros, nor Stiglitz
can change the precarious situation world capitalism finds itself in today.
Despite my sharp disagreements with Robert Brenner over the origins of
capitalism and his inexplicable endorsement of the right of the USA to fund a
counter-revolutionary movement in Cuba, his 1998 New Left Review article seems
more astute than ever. With the rise of the German and Japanese economies in
the 1960s, the
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/03/05/millennium_project_2015.html
The one measure that is capable of accomplishing such a goal is the very one these liberal do-gooders will never support, namely proletarian revolution.
WALLERSTEIN: But doesn't the Bush regime give these capitalists everything they want - for example, enormous tax rebates? But do they really want them? Not Warren Buffett, not George Soros, not Bill Gates (speaking through his father). They want a stable capitalist system, and Bush is not giving them that. Sooner or later, they will translate their discontent into action. They may already be doing this. This doesn't mean they will succeed. Bush may get reelected in 2004. He may push his political and economic madness further. He may seek to make his changes irreversible.
COMMENT: It does not matter what Buffett, Gates or Soros want. To paraphrase Wallerstein: not John Kerry, not Dennis Kucinich, not George W. Bush are capable of providing a "stable capitalist system". We are in a period of deepening crisis, imperialist war and--ultimately--revolutionary war. If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen.
WALLERSTEIN: But in a capitalist system, there is also the
market. The market is not all-powerful, but it is not helpless either. When the
dollar collapses, and it will collapse, everything will change geopolitically.
For a collapsed dollar is far more significant than an Al-Qaeda
attack on the
The near bankruptcy of the state governments across the
COMMENTARY: A typical Wallerstein
declaration from